This week one of Houston’s most talked about Mexican restaurants will host a two-night pop-up with a chef who has led the kitchen at one of the world's best restaurants. Tatemó, chef Emmanuel Chavez’s corn-obsessed restaurant and tortilleria, will host chef Alex Bremont for a taco pop-up that’s taking place this Tuesday and Wednesday, July 19 and 20, from 7 pm until 10 pm (or sell out).

Bremont served as head chef at celebrity chef Enrique Olvera’s acclaimed Mexico City restaurant Pujol. During his five year tenure, the restaurant earned a consistent spot in the top 20 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, including its current ninth place ranking.

The chef also has Houston ties, having lived here for 10 years between 2004 and 2014. Bremont worked at a number of local restaurants, including the Hyatt Regency downtown, South American restaurant Samba Grille, and Oxheart, the downtown restaurant where chef Justin Yu earned his James Beard Award.

Bremont tells CultureMap that he had never cooked Mexican food professionally prior to working at Pujol. Instead, he brought experiences from American fine dining restaurants and a year at Martin Berasategui, a three-star Michelin restaurant in San Sebastian, Spain.

“It was challenging at the beginning,” Bremont says about his time at Pujol. “I feel really happy when I say I was hired as the chef de cuisine who didn’t know much about Mexican cooking, but it gave me a different perspective on how to approach things. That’s what helped me when we wanted to improve our cooking and our techniques, the way we approached menu planning and creativity.”

As he prepares for his next project in Mexico City, Bremont is taking the opportunity to reintroduce himself to Houstonians. Working in collaborating with Chavez, he’s created a menu of five dishes that combine Tatemó's artisan tortillas made with nixtamalized corn with seasonal ingredients, including some sourced from the Urban Harvest farmers market.

• Beetroot tostada with chintextle, black garlic, and macadamia
• Cauliflower taco with encacahuatado and xnipec
• Huitlacoche taco with black truffle and avocado
• Eggplant taco with hoja santa, guacachile, and chicatanas
• Wild mushroom taco sudado with black beans and chile mulato

All of the dishes are vegetarian except for the flying ants on the eggplant taco.

“I’m excited to cook with chef Emmanuel, who is doing something really special with corn in Houston,” Bremont says. “We want to keep it sort of simple because it’s the first pop-up that we’re going to do. I would say this won’t be the only one. We want to test the waters.”

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Tatemó is located at 4740 Dacoma St., Ste F.